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Saturday, 27 June 2015

We're on our way!

For those who couldn't be there, here is the text of the keynote address that I gave at the Entrust Languages Conference in Stafford yesterday. I also did my Be a crafty Languages teacher workshop, which you can find here.

We’re
on our way!

The
road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows when

The Hollies released this single, He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother, a couple of weeks before I was
born. Its opening lines describe the
journey that we have taken so far along the road of Languages in Key Stage
2. It certainly has been long, with many
winding turns. It has taken us more than
10 years to arrive at where we are now, and our journey is far from over. The teaching of a modern or ancient language
has been statutory in Key Stage 2 for just about one academic year now. Can we already be sure where the road is
leading us, and when we will arrive at our destination?

The children’s
journey

Where do we want this road to lead? What is our destination? Is it a more linguistically adept
population? It is a less monolingual
country? Is it for languages to be
perceived as useful? Is it a solid
foundation of language learning and an enjoyment of the subject?

For most young people, the road will end abruptly at the
end of Year 9 (unless Nicky Morgan gets what she really wants and all students
really do have to continue with a language until they are 16) and their
destination will not, let’s face it, amount to much.
Our children in Key Stage 2, though, are at the beginning of the road. We are opening the door for them, gently
guiding them through it and setting them off on their way with their backpack ready
to be filled with useful things.

We hope that their journey will be long lasting. We hope that the road will lead them through
exotic colours and exciting experiences.
We hope that en route they
will pass, and maybe have the opportunity to explore, the many intriguing side
streets. And we hope that they will have
many songs to sing as they walk along, many stories to tell, and many friends
from all over the world with whom to share it.
We definitely hope that they do not wake up one morning to find that
they have to go back to the beginning and start their journey again…

What does the Key Stage 2 road look like? Well, it starts from nothing and ends in Year
6 with the “substantial progress in one language” that the Programme of Study
requires them to make. What are the
signposts on the way, the markers that will denote their progress? The statements in the Programme of Study are
vague, and can be difficult to decipher.
Dividing them up into skills helps, but it is only when we look at the
journey alongside the guidebook of the Key Stage 2 Framework for Languages that
it becomes clear.

For Listening, children are required by the new curriculum
to “understand spoken language from a variety of authentic sources”, to
“understand ideas, facts and feelings” and to “understand familiar and routine
language”. This is not to say that Year
3 children should be doing all of this. This
is the point that we should build up to by the end of Key Stage 2, as their
knowledge and confidence gradually increase.

Children are required to speak about people, places, things
and actions, to communicate ideas, facts and feelings, and above all to speak
in sentences. Children will speak using
single words in Year 3, phrases in Year 4, gradually building up to sentences
in Year 5 and Year 6. Children will
spend the 4 years of KS2 learning how to speak with increased confidence,
developing their strategies to help them to say what they want to say.
They will engage in conversations with each other, asking and answering
questions and giving their opinions.

The children will have a magic key in their backpack which
will clarify and facilitate their journey.
They will learn the system of phonics in their language, the
sound-spelling link, the key to their journey being a success. This will lead to children who are confident
readers, who can take a word they have never seen before and pronounce it
correctly, thus sidestepping potential obstacles on their path.

Children will read lots of texts of different types, some
written especially for them as learners, others authentic texts from one of the
countries whose language they are learning.
Stories, songs, poems and rhymes will provide some of this content, and so
are the ever present white lines that run all the way along the KS2
highway.

Children will write at varying lengths during their KS2 journey,
beginning with single words in Year 3, working through phrases and sentences in
Year 4 and Year 5 and building up to paragraphs in Year 6. They’ll also be able to adapt sentences that
they read in order to create something new.

The children’s road will be built on a firm foundation of grammar,
which will hold the whole structure steady and in place. They will always compare the language they
are learning with English, to see how it is the same and how it is
different. This will enable them not
only to learn more about the new language, but also to reinforce their
knowledge of English. They will develop
skills as independent learners, such as dictionary skills, which will help them
to say what they want to say. Even if
the bridge between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 has been knocked down, they can
confidently take an alternative route to the same destination with their
Language Learning Skills and Knowledge About Language in their backpack.

So the children have their journey, and their journey is
planned and its itinerary written by the route planners. Not Google Maps or the AA in this case, but
their schools and their teachers. In
turn, each school and each teacher has their own languages journey. They may well have started at a different
point and the route may have been different.
They may have been stuck at roadworks a few times waiting for the road
to be completed or for the way to be clear.

The teacher’s journey

As for my languages
journey, I'm just coming to the end of my twentieth year as a Languages
teacher. I spent fourteen of those years
in secondary schools, flogging away with French and Spanish at GCSE level. The last six of those years have been in
primary schools, altogether a very different experience. Younger children ask lots more questions. “Can I go to the toilet?” “When’s it
lunchtime?” and let’s not forget “Are you from France?”
My particular favourite question was “Madame, you know the Eiffel Tower, is it
in Sunderland?”

One of the most common
questions, however, is "How do you know Spanish?" My answer is that I learned at school, the
same as them, and then went to university to learn some more and lived in Spain
for a while to learn even more. I tell
them that they have a head start on me as I didn't start learning Spanish till
I was 16. They are lucky to start
learning when they are 5. But then I
also say that I am still learning. I
learn new things about my languages and other languages every day. Languages adapt and morph on a daily basis,
and you never finish learning them.

So I am not only a
Languages teacher. I am also a language
learner. I would say that I am in my
38th year as a formal language learner.

I started to learn
French when I was seven, at middle school.
I grew up in Surrey, where there was at the time a three-tier
system. We changed schools at the end of
what are now Years 3 and 7. My learning
of French in the first year of middle school (equivalent to Year 4) comprised
writing out lists of things like numbers and months and colours, and sticking
them on the inside of our wooden desk lid so that we could see them each time
we lifted it up to get something out or put something away. We were given a French name and a
number. I was Denise and my number was
dix-neuf.

Then in the second year
(Y5 equivalent) we went to the new building and were allowed access to the
specialist French teacher, who we shared with the private girls’ school in the
next village. I can't remember exactly
what we did, but there was a lot of chalk and talk and grammar drills, and the
filling in of the little booklets, which I think were Eclair.
There was certainly no technology involved.
In fact, there wasn’t any technology to be involved! We only learned one song - Savez-vous planter les choux? - and
didn't play any games. There was no role
play and certainly no pair or group activities.
However when I left middle school in 1981, aged nearly 12, I knew avoir and être, the present tense of regular verbs, and had started the passé composé. I knew and could explain why boys said ma cravate and girls said mon chemisier.

Then I went to
secondary school, which in this three tier system we started in Y8, and started
French again, from scratch. After half a
term we moved house, to the other side of Guildford. I arrived at my new school after the October
half term holiday. My year group was
coming to the end of a carousel of second language tasters. I did 2 lessons of Spanish and had missed the
German and Latin. The following week we
had to choose our second language. I
opted for Spanish as I'd tried it and because I have a Spanish godmother.

I was put in the Latin
group. Initially I was disappointed, but
in retrospect it’s the best thing that could have happened! Latin has been immensely helpful to my
knowledge about language, to my French, my Spanish and my English. It also helps to make me unbeatable at
certain quiz games.

Meanwhile I was
continuing with French and another new teacher with whom, again, the class was
starting again, but at least this time it was with Le français d'aujourd'hui and the Bertillon family. I remember telling my mum that I found French
boring. I fell out of love with
languages for a while.

I kept the same French
teacher all the way through secondary school, for all of the four years. Gradually it dawned on me that, far from
being boring, she was amazing, and had us (admittedly the top group) ready for
O level at the end of the 3rd Year (Year 9). We spent the next two years practising,
learning the past historic and writing countless 100 word essays (we did the
AEB board), enjoying the challenge of trying to cram in all the great
structures we'd learned. I have spent
many an idle moment trying to pin down exactly what her secret was.

So that's my language
learning journey from the late 70s to the mid 80s. The road was unembellished, modest and
traditional, but it suited me and I learned a huge amount.
I went to France for the first time – on a school day trip - when I was 14 and
was quite happy to have a go with the speaking.

However this road was
not easy for everyone. One of my friends
was in the same set as me for French, and she also was the recipient of an A
grade at O level. She also had done
Latin and so had a pretty good understanding of how language worked. She should have done A level French but the
thought of having to speak the language terrified her.
It was something we had hardly done in 4 years, apart from answering the odd
question in class, and so the O level speaking exam with a visiting examiner
was a bit of an eye opener.

Your language learning
journey will have been different, and it may or may not have suited you. Many methods have come and gone, and in some
cases come again, since then.
The way languages are taught in primary schools now is worlds apart from the
way I was taught in 1978. Our children’s
current journey is very different to the one that we will have experienced
ourselves.

My road started in the
south-east, and has led me gradually, and via a very circuitous route, to the
north-east. For a lot of the time I have
walked hand in hand with other people. I
don’t feel that it is a journey that I have had to make alone. Of course I have walked alongside my
teachers, lecturers and fellow students.
But I have also had the company along the way of good friends, my
Spanish flat mates, the family in France who housed me during my year
abroad. More recently I have walked
alongside and been supported by the many language professionals with whom I
have connected via social media over the last 10 years. I feel a little like Forrest Gump when he
begins his epic running across the USA and back and across and back. It starts off being just him but gradually he
is joined by more and more inspired runners until there are huge crowds running
with him. Except on my journey I am not
the leader, I am not at the front of the group.
The crowds are mutually supportive, taking it in turns to direct and
lead.

How has your language
learning journey been? Have you
travelled alone, or have you had others walking with you? Are you lonely and looking for someone to
share your journey?

It is true that the day-to-day life of a teacher is not an
easy one. Particularly if you’re a
teacher who has had to add another subject to their already busy planning and
teaching schedule. It’s easy to get
stuck in a rut where there are no fresh ideas, where you can’t think round a
problem to find a new way of doing it that is just right for your class, where
you can’t find the information that you need to deliver the lesson to your own
high standard. And how many times have
you spent ages on a resource only to find later that you have in fact reinvented
the wheel?

As they said in High School Musical, we’re all in this
together. Whether we like it or not,
whether we are prepared to admit it or not, we all face the same challenges and
the same pulls on our time. We’re
working towards a common goal but we all have different tools at our
disposal. We have to support and help
each other.

The year before I became an AST I did a “Becoming a subject
leader” course. It taught me that I
didn’t want to be a subject leader, but it did teach me some useful things too.
Like how important it is to build a culture of sharing, supporting and
networking amongst your colleagues.

If you want to connect with a wider audience, there are
different forums and other online “outlets” that you can access. For example there is the TES Forum, where you
can discuss languages and their teaching, although the Modern Languages forum
isn’t half as busy as it used to be. I
can’t recommend Twitter and the #MFLTwitterati highly enough for keeping you up
to date with cutting-edge ideas and for the camaraderie. If you follow my Primary Languages UK Twitter
list, you can keep in touch with and get information from over a hundred
primary languages teachers, specialist and non-specialist, as well as from
organisations, publishers and suppliers.
If you are a Facebooker, there is the Languages in Primary Schools
group, a closed group which has over 1700 members, and which is both immensely
supportive and always positive.

It is a well-known fact that many of the teachers who find
themselves having to teach Key Stage 2 Languages are in need of some help with
the language itself. They may be lacking
in confidence in their own ability, or needing help refreshing the language
that they learned a long time ago at school.
There has not been much money forthcoming for the majority of primary
teachers who require upskilling, so the arrival of the Association for Language
Learning’s network of Primary Hubs has been a godsend. They exist all over the country so find one
near you. They are free of charge and
allow you to link up and meet with other professionals who are in the same boat
as you.

The children have their
language learning journey, and we as teachers have our own. Everyone is at slightly different points
along their own individual road. And everyone has their own way of walking.

The teacher’s way

What is our “way” in
terms of what we do in the classroom?

One of our main aims is
to get the children involved in their learning.
They are no longer the passive recipients who sit silently in rows and
then complete pages of exercises in their books. We know that children learn best when they
have the opportunity to help, support and explain to each other. They learn best when they take part in an
activity that they perceive to be fun, interesting or different. They learn best when they have the
opportunity to do the things that young children like to do: singing, dancing
around, playing and laughing.

Confucius said:
“I
hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.”
which is further clarified in the words of this Native American proverb:
“Tell me and I’ll forget.
Show me and I may not remember.
Involve me and I’ll understand.”
Both sayings emphasise the importance of children’s participation and
involvement in their learning.

When I was a secondary teacher, my colleagues and I had
preconceptions about primary classrooms.
We thought that children were always up and down and out of their seats
and unable to sit and listen. It’s how
we used to account for Year 7’s fidgeting and neediness. But now I know differently. Primary children work collaboratively, in pairs
and in groups. They change activities
frequently to keep the pace going and to maintain interest. Seating patterns are important and there is
also a strong culture of helping others.
Much primary learning is characterised by active learning. Children read, talk, write, describe, touch, interact,
listen and reflect. They learn by doing,
thinking and exploring through planned and quality interactions. The child is not a passive observer.

So what sort of activities and materials should we be
aiming to include in our language lessons?
The learning set-up is a bit different to other subjects as the children
rely more on the teacher as the source of knowledge than maybe they do
elsewhere.

Let’s start with flashcards. Of course they are very useful for the
teacher when presenting new language to the class, but once the teacher has
finished with them, they can be handed over to the children to help them to
practise the new words and phrases. They
are easy to manipulate and require no ICT after you’ve made them. And they always work when the computer, for
some reason, doesn’t. Children are very
good at thinking of ways to practise new language in pairs or groups with sets
of small cards.

Dominoes are a pair or group activity ideal for revising
prior learning or indeed for practising new language. There is the possibility of matching up
words with pictures, words with words or even words with numbers. How about matching up the two halves of a
sentence? There are many possibilities,
all of which require the children to discuss the answer together and arrive at
a decision.

Moving on one step from dominoes are shape puzzles, or
Tarsias, as they are now more commonly known.
Each side of each shape has a word or picture that needs to be matched
with another word or picture so as to create the final shape. When the Tarsia is finished, it can be used
as a reference tool, stuck down on sugar paper and added to.

Sorting activities like Trash or Treasure or Venn diagrams
oblige children to work together to find the links between words and phrases. The more sorting they do, the more familiar
they become with the selection of words and their functions.

For practising structure in writing try a game of
Showdown. Each group of children has a
set of cards with phrases or sentences in English or in picture form that need
to be written in the target language. The
group captain chooses a card and puts it on the table for the rest of the
children to see. They each write on
their own mini whiteboard the phrase or sentence that the card requires. When they have all finished, the captain says
“Showdown” and all members of the group show what they have written. They discuss, looking at the evidence they
now have, what the correct answer is.

For another way to practise structure, use dice,
multi-link, Lego or paper chains.
Each number or colour relates to a part of a sentence or an individual word.

There is even something as simple as giving each child a
Post-It and asking them to test each other on the words you have been learning
and note down the results on the Post-it for you. Everyone will be busy, it will only be a
short activity, and there won’t be lots of children sitting bored and restless
while the teacher has to go round testing individuals.

When the class is playing a game like Chef d’Orchestre or
Hide and Seek they will be enthusiastically speaking the language, but not
thinking about it – the language is the means of winning the game or helping a
classmate to find the answer.

And going right back to basics, every time the children
repeat a word and perform an action to go with it, they are responding
physically to the language, but also being active learners and involving
themselves in the learning.

The children have their
journey, each school and teacher has theirs, and we all have our own way of
walking, our own style and our own preferences.

The national journey

Where are we in terms
of our national journey?

I recently invited
teachers to complete a survey so as to find out a bit more about what is
happening in the world of Key Stage 2 Languages. There were 160 responses, representing 160 schools,
which admittedly is only a tiny proportion of all the schools in England, but I
think the answers give a good idea of what is happening.

76% of schools offer
French, and 34% Spanish. You’ll see that
the percentages don’t add up to 100, and of course this means that some schools
are offering more than one language.
Some schools offer two, and a smaller number offer three. As you can see, the percentages for German,
Italian and Mandarin are very low compared to French and Spanish. This is probably largely to do with teacher
expertise and experience, as well as being a reflection of the number of
resources and the amount of support that is available for each language. It is interesting to compare this with the
same question posed to KS3 teachers.
There is a lot more German offered in KS3 while the French and Spanish
are quite similar.

Language learning in
the primary phase is only statutory in KS2, but about half of respondents said
that their children learn a language in KS1 as well. In the case of the school where I teach
French, French lessons happen every other half term, so a half term on, half
term off pattern. Starting in Year 2
means that by the end of KS2 they have had more time overall.

More than half of the
teaching is done by language specialists.
It is difficult to know how much the results of this survey are skewed
by the profile of those responding.
Although more and more schools do seem to be going down the route of
having a specialist do their Languages lessons for them. I have been approached by 3 schools in the
last few weeks. We need to bear in mind
the impact that this will have on staff skills.
If teachers are at a school where a specialist delivers the language
lessons, and they then move to a school where they are expected to deliver the
language themselves, they will have no experience to draw on.

The vast majority of
children have their language lessons once a week, throughout Key Stage 2. The new Programme of Study doesn’t specify a
time allocation for the teaching of Key Stage 2 Languages, and the DfE has been
less than forthcoming. The Framework
recommends an hour a week, saying that this hour can be cut into, say two half
hours or three lots of 20 minutes. There
are some schemes of work, the Jolie Ronde for example, whose plans allow for
several short lessons per week rather than one long one. It is surprising, therefore, that very few
schools appear to be going for the “little and often” model. Maybe it’s just that it’s easier to timetable
for and actually teach a longer session.

The majority of
children have languages lessons that are between 30 and 60 minutes. Personally my Spanish lessons work out at
about an hour, and the French at about 45 minutes. It’s also good to see that Year 6 don’t
appear to be missing out on their language lessons too much.

It’s when examining
some of the issues raised by this survey that we trip over some of the
obstacles that have been left scattered on our road. One the biggest obstacles is the big thorny
briar that is Key Stage 2-Key Stage 3 Transition. The word Transition in itself is misleading,
as it implies a change. However we now
have a 7-14 Languages continuum, and we should be aiming for the journey to be
as seamless as possible to maximise the progress. It is clear, though, that at the moment this
is not happening.

I asked teachers if
they sent transition information for their Year 6s to the secondary
schools. 26% of teachers said yes, 56%
said no. I also asked KS3 teachers if
they receive information from their feeder primary schools. 8% said that yes, they receive the
information from all or most of their feeders.
34% receive information from some of their feeders. 48% of secondary schools do not receive
anything. This means that about half of
secondary teachers do not know what their new Y7s will have been doing in KS2,
the language that they have been learning, and what they have covered. If we don’t tell them this information, we
are doing the children a huge disservice and probably consigning them to a Year
7 of repeating what they have already done in Key Stage 2.

In order to look in
more depth at the situation I asked some more questions of the Year 7 teachers. Only 21% agreed that their new Y7s will
continue the same language that they started in KS2. Only 40% agreed that they have adjusted their
Year 7 Schemes of Work to take into account KS2 experience. 63% agreed that they disregard KS2 experience
and effectively start again with Year 7.

All of this is disheartening
for those of us who spend so much time investing in the linguistic future of
Key Stage 2 children. It is clear that
the two phases have a lot to do.
Communication must take place and those links must be made. Transition is so important, and can’t be
ignored under the pretext of “We have so many feeder primary schools it would
be impossible” or similar. We have to
make KS2 Languages work. We have come too
far down the road to let it fail now.

Transition isn’t our
only obstacle, of course. There are
other obstacles such as Ofsted, who are reluctant to tell us what exactly they
will be looking for apart from that it will be inspected in the same way as the
other Foundation subjects. They don’t
appear to be taking a huge amount of interest in the subject, and don’t appear
to be voluntarily observing lessons during inspections.

Conclusion

I’m on my way I’m making it
I’ve got to make it show, yeah
So much larger than life
I’m gonna watch it growing

It has been a long,
long road, but we have the destination in our sights. We’re on our way, we’re making it. Great things are happening, we’ve got to
make it show, and we are making it show.
We need to continue along the same road, wearing the same very suitable
shoes, with the same backpack full of our best tips and tricks, walking briskly,
resolutely and confidently, watching the children’s learning and love of
languages growing.